Category Archives: Marketing

We surround ourselves with entertainment and news and music and talking and texting and constant accessibility to internet. We immerse ourselves in the many messages we hear from culture, family, church, school, and work. We are loud and wordy and flashy and full of so much swirling around that it often feels impossible to shhhhhhh… into a place of quiet, stillness, and rest.

Richard Rohr writes about the place of silence in this excerpt below from his recent article “Finding God in the Depths of Silence” in Sojourners (March 2013):

At the less mature levels, religion is mostly noise, entertainment, and words. Catholics and Orthodox Christians prefer theater and wordy symbols; Protestants prefer music and endless sermons.

Probably more than ever, because of iPads, cell phones, billboards, TVs, and iPods, we are a toxically overstimulated people. Only time will tell the deep effects of this on emotional maturity, relationship, communication, conversation, and religion itself. Silence now seems like a luxury, but it is not so much a luxury as it is a choice and decision at the heart of every spiritual discipline and growth. Without it, most liturgies, Bible studies, devotions, “holy” practices, sermons, and religious conversations might be good and fine, but they will never be truly great or life-changing — for ourselves or for others. They can only represent the surface; God is always found at the depths, even the depths of our sin and brokenness. And in the depths, it is silent.

You may have noticed this picture trending on Facebook and Pinterest this week.

I ran across it myself, which led me to discovering The Illusionists, a documentary that is currently in post-production and promises to be a balanced and informative look at the commodification of the human body. That’s right up our alley here at HBTB, so I thought I’d do a little plugging for them. Check out the video below.

I know this doesn’t have anything to do with Holy Week or Easter or anything in our theme last week and this week, but I couldn’t resist. If only we were all so enlightened, there would be no need for blogs like HBTB!

If the line between secular and sacred is truly blurred, then how do we bring the holiness of God into our cultural conversations about what is beautiful?

In my own experience, it has been very healing to speak God’s truth into the lies I received from culture about my body image that I believed for so long without even being aware of their influence. This is one reason having a holistic body theology is so important and why I have dedicated my blog to writing about it. We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten who we have been created to be. Educating people about ways to deconstruct the advertising and entertainment industries can go a long way in bringing truth into cultural light.

Take, for example, Alison Jackson‘s photographs and her discussion of voyeurism in this TedTalk from 2009. In the video she describes how photography seduces us into believing things that aren’t true or into seeing things that we want to be true even when they aren’t possible:

I’m fascinated how what you think is real isn’t necessarily real. The camera can lie, and it makes it very, very easy with the mass bombardment of imagery to tell untruths. (Alison Jackson)

Our consumerist culture buys into nearly anything these days that will feed into the need for instant gratification. Marketing and advertising firms spend their resources on finding out what we wish were true or what we wish we were and then coming up with ways to exploit our wishes by making us feel inadequate, making us feel the need of something we didn’t even know we wanted — and suddenly that need is urgent and insatiable.

In other words, we are driven by fear.

Fear — which is the opposite of faith– and sin — which certainly gets in the way of experiencing God’s holiness — are the roots of many body image issues, especially in our western culture. There is that appealing quality about Gnosticism, for instance, which perpetuates the fear that the body will somehow hinder the soul’s search for enlightenment or perfection or completion. Or that fear of being out of control, which is certainly a known root cause of many eating disorders.

But we were given bodies, and our bodies were pronounced good— a fact we often forget in our effort to retain control.

We need to be reminded that experiencing abundant life necessitates a willingness to release control and by doing so open ourselves up to experience something extraordinary, something unknown, something beautiful — which is the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

Next time you stand in line at the grocery store and stare at all those magazine covers, ask yourself what messages culture is sending you and whether those messages are designed to send you into a spiral of fear and sin or to open you up to the quiet beauty that is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

What cultural messages have you noticed recently? Share your experience in the comment box below. Let’s grow together in our discernment of culture and the media.

As part of the on-going series, the links below will take you to current conversations about sexuality and relationships as well as issues related to the other three categories of holistic body theology: community, cultural discernment, and service.

Stay informed about what the world and the Church are saying so we can discussthe issues, discernhealthy, holistic body theology, and discoverGod’s truth in the midst of many opinions.

Here’s this week’s installment. (Links are organized roughly by date and similarity of content.)

Don’t be shy. Share your thoughts in the comment section, or join the original conversations via the links provided.

3) Love You! Now, the Difficult Stuff… Once people decide they are in love…too often they will duck tough conversations for fear of undermining what they see as a magical connection.

4) Should the Church Begin Arranged Marriages? With children hitting puberty earlier and earlier, and the level of sexual brokenness in our culture, having arranged marriages provides people with, hopefully, a healthier sexual outlet at a younger age.

6) Sex change British man gives birth to son Last night medical ethics experts called for a full inquiry into the issues surrounding transgender births, saying the interests of the child should not be risked to “fulfill the rights of an adult”.

8) To the Girl Who Has Never Dated Dating seems to have fallen into this weird category in Christian circles where we are either one date away from marriage or ruining the rest of our lives. Talk about extremes.

11) Unplanned Parenthood: The Blessing of an Inconvenient Pregnancy [F]ertility and childbearing highlight my addiction to control more than almost anything else…. Women are, after all, trained to control our bodies. Managing one’s appearance and conducting one’s body in a way that honors God are common female virtues in the church.

Media Literacy/Cultural Discernment

1) Kelli Anderson – Disruptive Wonder for a Change The world is full of order that doesn’t necessarily deserve our respect. Sometimes there is meaning, justice, and logic present in the way things are — but sometimes there just isn’t. [Her thoughts on media literacy begin around 9:30 with an astonishing prank.]

Community: Equality Issues (There’s so much happening this week in the wake of John Piper’s remarks that I thought it deserved its own category.)

1) The Rhetoric of Masculine Christianity Yet the most important issue is not that Piper’s view would be misunderstood. The absolute fundamental problem would be that it would be mistakenly taken as good news.

2) John Piper’s Masculine Christianity There is certainly a masculine feel to Christianity; but does this masculine feel necessarily exclude an equal female feel? Aren’t there aspects of the Christian faith that have a feminine feel to them…and should we also seek to promote these?

3) Lecrae, 116 Clique and John Piper — 100& Masculinity I assert that it is not masculinity that saved us from femininity; rather, that love compelled Christ to come and save us from fear, hate and darkness; that love compelled Christ to sacrifice all to save us from ourselves, our sin and our selfishness.

4) Writing for a Sexist World [A]s women who write we have to be feminist, explicitly feminist—because the reception of our work will often be sexist.

5) Women’s History: Give Credit Where It’s Due Motivated by the belief that men and women were made in God’s image to “rule the earth” together, these pro-woman, pro-justice believers sought to right wrongs for those who had less social power. Isn’t it time we reclaimed our own story?

1) seeds matter. we don’t have to keep perpetuating systems we fundamentally disagree with. we don’t have to pass on a legacy of inequality and sexism to our children. we don’t have to comprise our integrity to keep fitting in. change starts with us.

2) Interview with Dan Brennan [W]e should never treat persons as instruments for achieving our own agendas….This is foundational for a life-giving, holiness and reverence between the sexes in marriage and friendship.

9) What’s the Point of Church Membership Perhaps the actual problem is that we don’t want to commit to a bunch of broken people who will inevitably hurt us and let us down. So we settle for tarnished intimacy and feigned vulnerability.

10) Gong Story My real agenda was not even to disciple her, but to make her more like me – and she saw straight through it. Who wants to be like a gong?

14) Five Principles for Surviving Community [Community] is a purposing to stand hand in hand with a variety of others, for a variety of reasons, and to say somehow–”These are MY people.” while not obscuring the fact that countless others, yet unknown, could equally fit such a description.

2) Crocheting for a Better Tomorrow [T]he cards are meant to serve as a reminder that we should remember to feel compassion and love for our neighbors both locally and globally.

3) Do We Have to Forgive Chris Brown? Something is very, very wrong when a story about Jesus protecting a woman from male violence is being used to protect a violent man from feminist criticism.

4) Finding Our Political Will to End Poverty Remarkably, we made it through 2011 without any major cuts to programs focused on hungry and poor people. We maintained the safety net in this country, and it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

5) Cost-Effective Compassion The difficulties in assessing the impact of antipoverty efforts only magnify the need for understanding the impacts of different types of programs.

As part of the on-going series, the links below will take you to current conversations about sexuality and relationships as well as issues related to the other three categories of holistic body theology: community, cultural discernment, and service.

Stay informed about what the world and the Church are saying so we can discussthe issues, discernhealthy, holistic body theology, and discoverGod’s truth in the midst of many opinions.

Here’s this week’s installment. (The numbers aren’t rankings. Links are organized roughly by date and similarity of content.)

Don’t be shy. Share your thoughts in the comment section, or join the original conversations via the links provided.

2) Our Bodies Are What? Our bodies are beautiful. They’re the image of God despite all their earthly imperfections. We might have defects, but we are still loved and cherished by God.

3) The (real) secret to hot sex His message is antithetical to the sex advice found everywhere from self-help books to the supermarket checkout line: The secret to a fulfilling sex life is mental, not physical.

10) The Great Modesty Experiment So, following these rules as carefully as possible, considering my Christian brothers at every turn, I am left with one pair of jeans, and three shirts that fit the modest standards.

1) The Power of Choice in ‘Downton Abbey‘ But my favorite aspect of Downton is its emphasis on humans’ agency and accountability despite social and economic barriers. The characters are never excused for their choices by circumstance, class, gender, time period, or even the unfairness of the rules to which they so tightly cling.

2) Caucasian Christian Radio This preferential music that is called “Christian” is killing the gospel message by being exclusive, ethnocentric, and close-minded.

3) A Little More Ration for Fashion [W]hat we wear on our bodies can be an obedient and worshipful response to these experiences of space and time and who we encounter in these experiences.

5) Can Fidelity Make a Good Movie? [T]he field of movies about marriage is much more diverse than the box-office belies. Viewers just have to be willing to look beyond a film’s self-advertising and see what can be revealed by digging a little deeper.

6) The Cultural IQ of the Church Christian leaders are lagging behind in attaining the cultural intelligence they need in order to navigate through this multi-cultural reality.

Community: Equality Issues (There’s so much happening this week in the wake of John Piper’s remarks that I thought it deserved its own category.)

2) God Is Not Ashamed When I challenged men to respond to John Piper’s claim that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel” with posts that celebrate femininity and affirm women in the Church, I never expected this.

3) Following the Leader Wherever She May Go I am deeply convinced that God calls both women and men into all vocations in the Church, gifting and empowering them to walk with one another in obedience to those callings.

5) Is Christianity Supposed to Be Masculine? For Paul it would seem that a predominantly masculine Christianity would betray the logic that Christ is all and in all….[T]he traits that Paul mentions to describe the people of God…aren’t those that Piper mentions for his masculine Christianity.

6) Redemption and Strength in Men and Women I think God gave Christianity a redemptive feel, a feel of reconciliation, a feel of hopeful expectation through his desire to save wayward, broken people like us.

7) God the Father…and Mother? The father image shows us just how intimate God’s relationship with God’s people really is. But does this mean God is exclusively a father, and does not have any mother qualities at all?

8) Why the Church Needs Women [W]omen are living, breathing witnesses to the truth about human nature who in their very bodies direct God’s Church away from idolatry and heresy and toward true Christian faith and practice.

10) In Search of Masculine Christianity The idea of a strong and aggressive (masculine?) Christianity, portrayed in [Studd’s book], had more to do with restraint, with sacrifice, with generosity, not bullying but serving, not hoarding [but] giving, not rampant conference attending but packing our suitcases for Christ’s sake and not coming home again.

12) Femsculine Christianity [Jesus] never said that his way was masculine or feminine. Rather, he persisted in breaking the oppressive barriers that had been set up against women. We must imitate him in this.

13) Digging Deep; Planting Trees And maybe in the planting we’ll end up with a forest so wide and beautiful the ditch will fill with flowers and old logs and we can sit and have conversations, conversations that are life-giving and life-up-lifting.

14) Unladylike If we want to be part of empowering women everywhere, understanding our value–and our equality in the eyes of God–is essential. It’s from this place that we can go on and transform our world.

15) Unladylike: A Review If we accept her tenet that women were made, fully and completely by a loving God, to do His (Her) good work, then the ways we resist come from Him (Her), too.

1) To Cade and the Eight Percent We wear political correctness as a badge of honor; but the rising statistics of pregnancies terminated after a Downs syndrome diagnosis reveal the hypocrisy of our celebration.

2) The Great Escapism At first glance, living in local community seems to clash with the lifestyle of a church-hopping, apartment-renting, rootless and restless generation. But the benefits of plugging into local community are many….It’s time to invest where you are—no matter how long you’ll be there.

3) God Is a Verb that Acts Like Jesus The solution to individualism is not smaller churches; the solution to individualism is a decade or more of teaching and embodying the community nature of the Body of Christ….

5) Calling All Callings When we begin to understand this invitation from Jesus to join his mission of restoring all things, our enthusiasm for integrating faith and work will be heightened.

Service: Social Justice Issues

1) Down We Go: Diffusing Power The problem is when our churches, ministries, and communities inadvertently adopt the world’s thirst for power into our culture, our homes and the fabric of our lives.

2) The First Step Is Admitting There Is a Problem …and the evidence in the U. S. and around the world indicates that more and more people are coming to grips with the fact that extreme income inequality is a significant problem and that something has to be done about it.

3) The Church and Extreme Poverty The Church is unrivaled in its capacity. If you want to respond to the massive challenges of global poverty, then the Church is the organization with the legs to get it done.

4) pawn shops, empty refrigerators & the long hill up i am idealistic enough to think that if somehow, some way, every person who lived below the poverty line had brothers & sisters in Christ to journey together with for the long haul that over the course of time life could be different.

5) The Best Ways to Fight Poverty–Really That means that (1) churches should create their own anti-poverty initiatives (like microfinance), and (2) churches should lobby governments to do better.

6) The Washington Projects–Justus–Music Video Premiere The goal of this video is to give the viewer a visual understanding of what these victims face on a daily basis, and to entice those taken captive by the imagery to become the change they wish to see.

7) Praying for the Johns “If men stopped desiring [to buy sex], then this wouldn’t be a problem,” Hightower says. “Praying for men’s hearts to change is very important.”

Yesterday, guest blogger Matt Cavanaugh introduced us to the “false reality” of ideal body image often portrayed in the media. Culture has so much to tell us about who we are, but not all of it is true. In fact, some of it is actually physically impossible. Consider the unrealistic proportions of the Barbie doll, airbrushed makeup advertisements, and fashion models with eating disorders.

But culture tells us more than what we should look like. Romantic comedies tell us relationships are all about that first spark of infatuation. Magazines and entertainment news tell us who matters and how to imitate them. Advertisements tell us how we should look, who we should be with, and what we must purchase in order to have the life we deserve.

Culture tells us who we should emulate, how to interact with others, when to break up with our significant others, what we need to own in order to be important, who it’s okay to hurt in order to get what we want, how many sexual partners we should have and by what age, who’s opinion matters more, where we should buy our clothes and our cars, which zip code we should live in, who our friends should be, and so much more.

And that’s okay. Sometimes, culture has it right. But often, culture perpetuates an impossible standard and faulty ideals that are not only unhelpful but also unhealthy, especially in the media. These standards and ideals create a false reality in which we must accept a false identity in order to survive and thrive.

So what do we do? How do we pursue healthy, holistic body theology amidst all the false messages from culture and the media? Here are four easy steps:

1) Know God. “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt 6:33).

2) Know yourself. No matter who we are, what job we have, how much schooling we received, whether we’re married or single, kids or no kids, homeowners or renters–at bottom we are God’s children, covered with the blood of Jesus and clothed with righteousness. Our identity is in Christ, so to know Christ is to know ourselves.

3) Identify the messages you receive through culture. Instead of simply accepting everything at face value, ask yourself what this commercial or movie or news program is really trying to tell you about who you are and what you should want or need. Identifying the message breaks its power over you and enables you to view the message from a safe distance.

4) Ask yourself if the particular message from that commercial agrees with what you already learned in step 1 and step 2. If the answer is yes, then great! Accept the message. If the answer is no, then there is no need to pay it any attention. Simply acknowledge that it is a false message, and do not accept it. You have already broken its power in step 3, so you are in control. Choose to ignore the false message and go on with your happy life.

Okay, so maybe these steps aren’t quite that easy. Knowing God takes a lifetime. Knowing ourselves takes a lifetime. How can we ever get to step 3, much less step 4? Yes, it’s a process, and yes, we will all be imperfect at it. But the important thing is to have the awareness that there are messages we are receiving through culture and the media and that not all of them are true. The more we use step 3 and step 4, the more we will realize the need for more of step 1 and step 2.

Let’s have a practice run, shall we?

1) What do I know about God? God cares about the poor. God is trustworthy and my provider. Jesus said it is easier for a camel to fit through a door in the city gate that is only big enough for a person to walk through than for a rich person to fit into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus told the rich young ruler to give up all his wealth.

2) What do I know about myself? God cares about me when I am financially unstable. I can trust God to provide for my needs like the lilies and birds in the field. I will be happier and more fulfilled by following Jesus’ example of ministering to the poor and oppressed than by acquiring material wealth.

3) I watch The Pursuit of Happyness. One message I identify is that if I work really, really hard and never give up, I will get the job I always dreamed of and live in financial security for the rest of my life. Or, financial security = happiness. Or, achieving the American Dream will make me happy.

4) I measure step 1 and step 2 against step 3. The Pursuit of Happyness is a good movie, and I enjoyed watching it. But I don’t have to accept every message it gives in order to enjoy the movie. I accept the good that it has to offer, and I leave the rest. It’s true that working hard and never giving up are valuable character traits. I will accept that message. It’s not true that financial security will make me happy, so I will not accept that message.

Cultural discernment and media literacy cannot be achieved in one day, or one week, or even one year. It’s a lifelong process, but as we acquire more knowledge and wisdom from God, we will gradually free ourselves from the lies we have been believing, and as more of God’s truth informs our identity, the more wisdom and discernment we will gain.

Start small: Next time you watch a commercial, ask yourself what message is being presented, and test that message against what you know about who God is and who you are in Christ. You won’t catch every lie you receive in a day, but maybe you’ll catch that one.

Body theology is traditionally used to refer to body image and sexuality; however, I believe a true body theology is much more holistic, involving not only what we look like (physicality) but who we are as human beings (identity) and what we do with our bodies (community and service).

Holistic body theology is four-fold: sexuality/physicality, cultural discernment/media literacy, community, and service. Topics covered on this blog will stem from one of these categories, always with the underlying principle belief that our bodies were made good and, though corrupted by the fall, have been redeemed through Christ.

Holistic body theology, then, is based on the incarnation of Christ: God took on flesh, not merely the appearance of flesh; God lived and suffered and died—and rose again!—in the actual, fleshly sense. Likewise, we are both corporeal (bodily) andspiritual beings. My goal is to encourage Christians to realize our true identity in Christ, free ourselves from bondage to the lies that can be perpetuated through culture, and be empowered to enter into the redemption Christ offers both for our bodies and how we use them in the world. I believe that as we grow in knowledge and discernment, we can redeem both the way we see ourselves and the way we interact with culture–and enjoy living in freedom in the space where the sacred and secular blur into messy, surprising beauty.